Happy Now

Life is a mystery, a composite, a kaleidoscope. You win, you lose; you cry, you laugh; you grieve, you celebrate. The door is closed; the window is open. You can go through life experiencing only one of these possibilities, or you can experience them all. Most of us are in the latter group, but sometimes we get stuck on one side or another of a polarity. We need to be reminded that life on Earth has many sides. That’s what our loved ones do for us.

A month or so ago, a longtime friend of Anne’s and mine died suddenly of a heart attack. He and his husband had been together more than 40 years, just as Anne and I have. It was shattering to hear the news, especially since we recently lost another friend who had been with her wife almost 50 years. I found myself worrying about Anne and me, as well as about everyone we know—future illnesses and deaths, impending grief and sadness. I was stuck on the side of fear and depression, which can happen, especially at night (“night mind” we call it in our house). This was when Anne stepped in with the perfect comment: “We have plenty of time to be depressed in the future. Let’s be happy now.” I laughed. Thank you, dear Anne.

Such a wise truth, that. One I sometimes forget when my emotions sweep through me. I inherited both sides of optimist/worrier outlooks from my parents. For example, I can recall my father staring out the window one morning and saying, “I hope that’s not poison ivy on that tree.” My mother, on the other hand, pointed out a nearby trumpet vine with bright-orange flowers. They both had worries, but my mother’s inclination was always to put a positive spin on things. My dad used humor for that spin. He was a very funny man. When I was tearfully suffering through an existential dilemma of not wanting to die or live forever, he paused thoughtfully and finally said (with a twinkle in his eye), “Well, you just can’t please some people.” We both laughed. My parents looked to each other for the gifts of humor and positivity. Anne and I do too. Together we give one another balance at key moments.

I can’t control life’s vacillations, but I am learning to accept them. When upsetting events occur, I rely on loving friends and family for a shoulder to cry on or laughter to balance the tears. With time, a larger overview brings perspective. From my soul’s point of view, life and death are one, a guided journey through infinity. The course of our lives takes us to that vantage point. Every life event opens the door wider to the cosmos and our place in it. It’s not easy. In fact, it’s excruciatingly painful at times if a parent, friend, or life partner dies. Yet, in the midst of our grief, there are often one or two human angels who appear, to provide solace and peace of mind.

I have encountered such angels—sometimes strangers, sometimes friends—at times of loss in my life. Even now, as I feel apprehension for the future aging and passing of those I love (and myself), there is a part of me that trusts in something greater than I can even imagine with my human mind. It is my soul that trusts, beyond all lifetimes, in the presence of Spirit (or God) in all things. Love as well as sorrow can open our hearts to the soul’s wisdom, the soul’s light. In loving one another, we experience all of life, and it passes through us with such divine beauty that how can we be anything but grateful? And “happy now.”

Bird’s Eye View

Anne and I live now in a third-floor condo overlooking an expanse of woods. In the past, we’ve always lived in second-floor apartments, so this is a change of perspective. We are at bird level. Blue jays and robins fly past our windows. We see more of the sky and continuously changing cloud formations. The sunlight moves into the trees at sunrise and fades to shadow at dusk. From a distance, we see flocks of birds land on the tree branches. As they fly through the sky and perch in the treetops, birds take in a multi-level overview of their environment. From our windows, I am coming to know a bit of how they experience the world.

I’m a birdwatcher/birder, so I love to see birds close up, but I am learning more about their sounds in living here. Now I often hear the birds before I see them. Because I am familiar with many of their calls and songs, I can usually identify which birds are nearby (e.g., nuthatch, chickadee, goldfinch, flicker, Carolina wren, cardinal, downy and red-bellied woodpeckers); I recognize them from their sound vibration instead of the visual cues. As the weeks go by, I am finding my hearing is becoming fine-tuned. I hear the bird calls and songs more readily and more distinctly now. My experience of being with birds has become as much sound as sight, like listening to an invisible avian orchestra in the trees.

There is a legally blind woman who visits Mt. Auburn Cemetery during the spring bird migration, as I do. She has been a birder for more than 30 years, and as her vision declined, she learned to identify birds solely by sound (after two cochlear implants for hearing loss). In fact, her ability to recognize bird calls and songs is so highly developed that she often hears what others can’t yet see. Or is able to identify a bird that some are hearing but can’t find in the trees. As her physical circumstances changed, her life experience also shifted. She meets the world in a different way now, through sound.

The Maya calendar symbol Tzikin stands for “vision” and is represented by the eagle, who sees a vast panorama of Earth from the skies. Intuition and clairvoyance are traits associated with this sign. Thus, “vision” can mean inner seeing in addition to outer. I would add that it can also mean sound as well as sight. Flying overhead, owls hear the sound of a tiny mouse beneath the snow; robins hear earthworms moving below the grass and soil. We may not be as aurally skilled as birds, but how we each experience the world depends on our own unique physical abilities and life experiences. All of life involves an inner/outer process, so every time we move from one place to another, whether a few feet or many miles, our perspective shifts. Also, as our physical form changes, so too does the way we perceive and receive life.

My “bird’s eye view” where I live now, on an upper floor, includes a wider lens in many ways. But it also includes a deeper listening at every level. Taken together, I experience the world in a more expansive way. Each day I am reminded how the universe is composed of an infinite number of interconnected fractals, which give me and all living beings the opportunity to encounter worlds of wonder in every sight, sound, scent, taste, or touch as we move through our lives.

Survivors

There are imitation “survivors” like those on the contrived TV show. Then there are real ones, such as those who have survived cancer, stem cell transplants, heart surgery, or another extreme health challenge. Surviving these involves courage and physical stamina unlike any other life experience. On the other side is relief, gratitude, happiness, but also, unexpectedly, sadness. The latter is invisible to others and almost unidentifiable at first to those experiencing it. It may have many sources, such as loss of “life as it once was” or the realization that one’s own mortality is inevitable, sooner or later. Unexpected tears arise for no specific reason, except perhaps the poignancy of life. I am a breast cancer survivor, and these issues came up for me. I am finding that they come up for others as well.

I just finished reading Suleika Jaouad’s book Between Two Kingdoms, Memoir of a Life Interrupted (and listened to her powerful TED talk), in which she describes her reactions to surviving a leukemia diagnosis at 22. Her prognosis was dire, and she went through almost four years of difficult treatments to finally emerge cancer-free.* She too then felt both relief and sadness, at times an unshakable depression. Yet she eventually came to great wisdom about how the two “kingdoms” of health and illness are not inseparable but “porous.” We all move back and forth between them in our lives. There are always “interruptions” of every kind.

The breast cancer treatments I received lasted about six months, and the prognosis was good, so my experiences were very different from hers in significant ways. She faced setbacks and brushes with death over years. Indeed, each person who lives through a difficult diagnosis or illness has a very unique experience. For the most part, after initial shock and fear, my experience became one of trust in my soul’s path and accompanying inner peace because of that trust. This helped me through any discomfort/pain that accompanied treatment. I had moments of extraordinary spiritual epiphanies throughout the surgical, chemo, and radiation treatments, ones that expanded my view of my own life and all life. It was only after the completion of treatment that an inner sadness appeared.

I must add that all this took place during the first years of COVID as well and brought up general issues of health and growing older. Looking ahead to one’s eventual death can happen at any age, young or old. It is something we each face. Those experiencing health challenges may have it handed to them unexpectedly, but we all eventually must come to terms with our own mortality. There can be fear, sadness, acceptance—or all simultaneously. It is never just one thing.

To be completely honest, thoughts of death and infinity have been with me since childhood (as those who read my blogs or books may know). I have carried background grief about the nature of life/death all my life. Yet, as I’ve explored a more spiritual path as an adult, those fears have shifted; a new balance has been created with deeper trust in the wisdom of a greater universal Intelligence. This is where I was when I was diagnosed with breast cancer. Eventually that took me to the next level, an indescribable expansion into the unknown which gave me a broader acceptance of both the tears and joy that is life on Earth. Yes, I’ve had sadness and emotional ups and downs after recovery from breast cancer, but I’ve also had amazing moments of connection to the spirit that exists everywhere. I became aware that at that level, life and death are One.

So, to be a real survivor (as opposed to a TV one) is to recognize that the deepest survival happens at the soul level, because the soul is eternal; it never dies. Our human bodies may survive illness, disease, trauma, heartbreak, loss, and other life crises. Our souls survive beyond all those physical experiences, even, or especially, death. Sometimes that’s how we learn this wisdom, through the challenges of our physicality. God shows us irrevocably that the form may “die”, but spirit never does. We are ALL soul survivors, every one of us—butterflies of light.
_____________
*Suleika was recently diagnosed with a cancer recurrence after ten years. She has moved once again through a successful bone marrow transplant, with her husband Jon Batiste by her side (as seen in the film American Symphony). Their mutual journey is very inspiring.

In Search of Silence

Silence can be hard to find these days, and if you find it, hard to hang on to. The 21st century world is filled with noise almost everywhere, even in places that are supposed to be quiet, like cemeteries and residential areas. But I’m getting ahead of myself. First, I have to admit that I am a lover of quiet: the silence of meditation rooms and nature sanctuaries. Deserted beaches and country roads. Mountain tops and forest clearings. Mornings before dawn. I gravitate to the absence of any sounds except those in Nature. In recent years, that has become more difficult to discover, particularly in living situations.

When Anne and I moved back to Massachusetts from Florida three years ago, we rented an apartment that was on a busy street in a town northwest of Boston. The neighborhood was generally peaceful, but the traffic sounds on that street continued all day long. Only in the night and early morning hours did quiet descend. We learned to live with it, but it did not engender an ongoing sense of outer peace.  A few months ago, we moved to a condo community in a more rural/suburban area with woods close by and busy streets further away. Very quiet—with one exception: There is a rifle and pistol club down the road, and the sound of gunfire is frequently audible in the distance. Fortunately, the building we live in is relatively soundproof, so we don’t hear it unless we go outside for walks, when it can definitely be disquieting.

As a walking alternative, I often take the train across town to my favorite nature sanctuary, Mt. Auburn Cemetery. I have been going there for many years to experience a quiet, peaceful oasis in the midst of a semi-urban area. Recently, though, there has been a change in focus at the cemetery. They are trying to encourage more people to visit by organizing events such as solstice gatherings, historical walks, etc. Along with that comes new sidewalks in some areas and the (perceived) need to keep them clean and tidy at all times. Enter leaf-blowers—and the deafening noise that accompanies them. When I visit now, if landscaping equipment is in use, I move in another direction, like the birds.

So, are cars, guns, and leaf-blowers obliterating any chance for silent peace in our contemporary culture? Not necessarily. For me, a spiritual perspective helps. From this view, silence is not solely a surface phenomenon in the external world. It lives inside everything, including each one of us. A friend of mine told me that when he visited India, the noise of the crowds and traffic in the cities was almost overwhelming, and yet he felt a deep silence simultaneously. It arose from a Presence deeper than human activity. And it is everywhere if we become aware of it.

Perhaps the secret is to carry silence with you. If I enter a situation consciously aligned with the silent Presence of spirit inside me (and everything), then that is what I experience. If I accept whatever is before me, I access peace. As mindfulness teacher Sarah McLean has said, “Welcome the soundscape where you are.” Every day, I relearn that wisdom. Within that space, there is nothing that can disturb my inner peace and silent soul.

“Relax into the part of you that is always silent, always still, always in meditation.”—Panache Desai

The Big Picture

The universe felt overwhelming to me when I was a little girl. One late-night thought of the vast unfathomable cosmos, and my five-year-old brain would freeze in terror. I learned to distract myself as I grew older, but the background fear never disappeared entirely. In college, a class in astronomy activated it again. It was only in later years, as I began to pursue a spiritual quest that some sense of meaning and safety in the universe came to me.

Over the years I have grown in my acceptance of what Native Americans have called “the Great Mystery.” It is multi-faceted and not a puzzle to solve but a vision of oneness that humans eventually learn to surrender to—either in life or in death. In life, we often get lost in the details and a need to control them. But if we can let go and accept everything in the span of our lifetime, inner peace arises within and remains with us always, even, or especially, at death. Some people call this peace God, or infinite consciousness. Language does not capture it, but the heart knows it. In moments of heart-centered connection to the people and the world around us, we are one with a presence beyond words.

When I am in that oneness, I see the perfection in all things, in my own life and in all life. There are no mistakes. In every detail of life is a light visible throughout the cosmos. When we accept our lives as perfectly unfolding, that light shines everywhere, and we relax into what has been called peace beyond understanding. For we cannot really “understand” life and death; we can only surrender to it and thus experience what is outside of the realm of understanding: Presence.

In that space, I have had the most profound sense of being part of a complex tapestry of beingness, every thread interwoven with every other thread, always connected and evolving within Presence itself. Each soul on an infinite journey to know itself. God experiencing God. My soul and divine intelligence chose the design of my life so that I could experience all the details of a human existence and eventually come to know everything as Heaven on Earth. Ultimately, there are no divisions in the universe. Humans experience division in order to return to oneness and know it as who they are. To know the universe as oneself. This is the Big Picture.

It has taken me many years to reach this perspective. Yet within it, I realize that there really are no “years,” or time as humans have defined it. The greatest sages have spoken of the eternal Now. This sweet moment of timeless time is what we have been given. When I surrender to that wisdom, the peace of my limitless soul informs all my life, and every “picture” before me, big or small, becomes one with an ever-changing cosmic kaleidoscope of light and divine connection. And as the full moon rises perfectly over the dark trees outside my window, my fear is replaced with gratitude.